{"id":154557,"date":"2025-06-03T10:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T10:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/154557\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T10:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T10:25:11","slug":"urgent-warning-over-hospitalisation-risk-from-common-medications-that-aussies-use-daily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/154557\/","title":{"rendered":"Urgent warning over hospitalisation risk from common medications that Aussies use daily"},"content":{"rendered":"

By SEBASTIAN TAN FOR AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS <\/p>\n

Published: 04:33 EDT, 3 June 2025 | Updated: 04:34 EDT, 3 June 2025 <\/p>\n

Medicines like paracetamol and antidepressants are contributing to an alarming number of children visiting emergency wards.<\/p>\n

Parents grabbing over the counter medicine to help their children is causing a startling number of hospital visits, researchers say.<\/p>\n

Almost 100 children and teenagers are being taken to emergency departments every day after taking over-the-counter medicines such as paracetamol and antidepressants.<\/p>\n

At least half of these visits are preventable due to being accidental or intentional overdoses on adult-only medication, University of South Australia<\/a> researchers said.<\/p>\n

The Royal Children’s Hospital emergency medicine director says intentional overdoses can be particularly concerning.<\/p>\n

‘(Paracetamol) is one of the scary medications where early on, there may be very minimal symptoms,’ Stuart Lewena told AAP.<\/p>\n

‘It’s only going to be when the paracetamol is starting to cause damage to the liver (when) we’ll start to see symptoms of nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.’<\/p>\n

In the case of accidental ingestions, he said parents and carers can be ‘flustered, anxious, worried about the error they’ve made’, delaying treatment.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Children can have adverse reactions to medication due to inaccurate dosages, experts say<\/p>\n

‘We’ve spent a lot of our time decreasing how confronting they’re finding it,’ he said.<\/p>\n

Dr Lewena said hospitals are stretched and urged parents to keep medication out of children’s reach.<\/p>\n

Parents should particularly keep an eye on prescription medications as one tablet can cause harm to children.<\/p>\n

‘Kids are incredibly resourceful at getting to things that they know they’re not meant to get to,’ Dr Lewena said.<\/p>\n

‘It’s worthwhile having a discussion with your pharmacist or doctor to know … “how risky is this in my household?”.’<\/p>\n

Imaina Widagdo, who led the UniSA research, says more needs to be done to protect the health of children, who have more adverse reactions to medicine than adults.<\/p>\n

‘Unlike adults, children have developing bodies, which means they can respond to medicines differently than adults,’ Dr Widagdo said.<\/p>\n

‘Secondly, because medicines are rarely trialled with children, the doses, safety and efficacy of certain medicines may not be fully known or always accurate.’<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

An emergency medicine director has urged parents to keep medication out of children’s reach<\/p>\n

In February, the federal government changed the number of paracetamol tablets per pack from 20 to 16 in general stores.<\/p>\n

The number is 50 in pharmacy medicine packs.<\/p>\n

Lifeline: 13 11 14<\/p>\n

Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25)<\/p>\n

Share or comment on this article:
\n Urgent warning over hospitalisation risk from common medications that Aussies use daily<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By SEBASTIAN TAN FOR AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: 04:33 EDT, 3 June 2025 | Updated: 04:34 EDT, 3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4315],"tags":[92,105,4326,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-154557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-medication","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114618952970950232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}